Joshua States

Robb! Good to see you again. Very good to see this project back in the process. This is an awesome build.

It.....is....alive! It's alive! Go for it man. I love it.

Score! What's the weight?

How did I miss this? Epic. What a fantastic job on that.

How cool is this? I keep meaning to get back to the three big blades I have collecting dust in the shop, but things keep getting in the way. At least this way I can watch someone else do it!

Now you know how to stand it upright!

First I opened the valve with a fitting in it to let the last of the propane out. Then I spun the valve out of the tank. Then I let it sit in the yard for about 2 years to make sure the tank was entirely purged. (115 degree summer heat will do that) Every so often I would sniff the opening to see if there was any residual propane odor. When I was sufficiently sure there was no explosive hazard, I cut the top off. The ceramic blanket was inserted through the top and left long so it will fold over against the lid. The T-couple ports are just 3/8" holes dilled though the tank wall with a 1/2" square tube welded to the face over the hole. The t-couple slides into the tube until the grip on the end reaches the tube. The T-couple is only 8" long and 1/4" diameter

Depending on what type of rock you have and where the grain structure lies, drilling can either go smoothly, or be a disaster, My advice is to NOT use the hammer function on the drill (if it has one). Just use it like a regular drill with plenty of water, light pressure and go slowly. My wife uses local flagstone as bases for her artwork quite frequently. This is a sedimentary sandstone prone to fracturing along plate lines. Even drilling on edge we have managed to drill holes without fracturing the rock by taking it slow and just drilling raher than hammer-drilling.

I will have to schedule some viewing time

They do go through the small square tubes. When I originally cut the tubes to length, I forgot to account for an inch of ceramic blanket....... The tubes were still 1/2" too long. Now the tip of the probe extends about 1/4" past the ceramic blanket.

Now I have to figure out how to reduce the heat and hold a tempering cycle

This was something I hadn't realized until I got done with these first two melts. The first one was allowed to cool for an excessively long time, which I think led to the lack of visible carbide formations. Thanks for the science Jerrod!

In my crucible I am using crushed green glass for a slag/sealant/flux. This floats to the top in a melt, and this melt was no different. I had to break through the glass/slag layer before getting to this stuff at the bottom of the crucible. I am no expert on this by any means, and I certainly don't have the metallurgical savvy, but.... From what I have been able to learn from guys who have done this a lot, is the dendritic pattern type is largely dependent upon two things: 1. The amount of carbon 2. The amount and type of carbide forming elements (CFE) that are added to the melt. The patterning is really just excess carbon that hasn't been absorbed by the iron and is now locked in the cementite. Get enough carbon in the mix and get the temperature control just right, you can create a dendritic pattern. The CFE controls whether that pattern is linear (like in the second puck above) or more watery, like most wootz patterns we think of. CFE are things like Vanadium, Nobium, Titanium, etc. They combine with the Carbon and form carbides in the steel. The CFE molecules provide an anchor point for carbide formation and if you get the heat control just right, you can get that classic watery patterning in the steel. Now watch as Jerrod Miller corrects me on everything I got wrong.... The first puck has some CFE content. I threw in some of the cast iron buttons I made here. The second puck is just iron and charcoal.

I figured out the solution to the heat differential today. Well, I thought I had a solution and I tried it today. It worked like a charm too. First, make sure the temp probes are fully inserted. That helps. Second, add a vent stack out of the bottom of the chamber to draw the heat downward. That really helps. I got this to hold temp at ~1485* F on both temp probes within 3 degrees of each other consistantly.

It did not sell. Sales at this show were good for folks in the $100-$200 range. Hopefully, the show and the competition winners get in the magazines and generate some interest.

OK hive mind. I have an enigma, at least to me. Probably not so mysterious to those of you with more metalurgical saavy and knowledge than this old man. When I stopped the boiling sand melt, I eventually chipped the "stuff" out of the crucible. I wound up with a buch of rock-like nuggets. These are somewhat sparkly on the top side, and dull on the bottoms. They are definitely magnetic. So here's the big question: Should I just put these in another crucible melt, or should I use these as feed stock in a short-stack melt?

And it will work, providing the bloom is iron, or low-carbon steel and you add the charcoal to increase the carbon level. If you end up with cast iron bloom, it will not work, you will just get more cast iron. You can tell if it is cast iron, by heating it up and trying to forge it. If it forges OK, it is either iron or low-C steel. If it falls apart or melts on you, it is cast iron. Really high-C cast melts really fast. See this thread:

Alan, did you resize the image for me?

Just a quick update, and a bit of bragging. I entered this seax into the maker’s competition at the OKG show this weekend. I entered it in Best Fighter. Much to my surprise, it won! Not only did it win Best Fighter, it also won Best Forged Blade. my apologies to the admin team on file size, I’m still in OKC. I will replace the photo with a smaller version once I get home

This was a long video with the Director’s of Hurstwic and Jackson Crawford discussing various research activities including recreating iron from materials sourced only locally in Iceland.

Yes that is correct. Iron grain, either small pieces or these handy 1mm spheres I got. I have about 30 pounds of magnetic black sand. I believe this is magnetite. The short stack furnace that Aiden is using refines iron into steel bloom. Bloom needs further refinement through forging, folding/stacking and welding to become a homogeneous (or mostly homogeneous) material. The crucible method takes raw iron or iron ore, and combines it with a carbon source to create a homogeneous steel ingot.

Looking really good Aiden.

@Hoy's Forge see this thread by @Aiden CC:

The two pucks above were made from pure iron fed stock and charcoal, with a little something for carbide donor. The black sand try was on a whim. Pringle says he does that all the time, so I figured I'd try it. What Pringle didn't say was "Watch out for the carbon boil, it will really freak you out". You can certainly re-melt all those scraps and broken dreams knives into useable stock. An A4 crucible handles a 1 kg charge easily. It might get a little more carbon from crucible uptake, but that never hurts. You would need to cut them into small pieces to get them in the crucible as tightly packed as possible. Or you could build a short stack ala Emiliano does and melt it all into a handy bloom and process it from there. I have wanted to make steel ever since the first time I saw a video of @Mark Green pulling a bloom out of a stack. Liz took a dim view of me building Frankenfurnace in the back yard, so that wasn't an option. Then she decided that she wants to melt and cast metals like copper and aluminum........now she needs a crucible furnace. So I can do crucible steel.

Whatever it was, it made a freaking mess! I sanded the windows to 220 and tried a light etch to see any dendritic patterning. First puck, not much to see. Second puck looks better